EE MARC records

In addition to a MARC record for Electronic Enlightenment as a whole, we are providing MARC records corresponding to the writers of letters included in EE.

Technically speaking, these records are not 'records for letter-writers', but records for the electronic edition of that person's correspondence within EE. They are analogous to analytical records for parts of books, and can be included in the catalogue on similar terms.

Why have MARC records for individuals?

Published sources of material in Electronic Enlightenment tend to treat correspondence in terms of a single central figure, even though many letters in the correspondence may not be by that figure. In EE, every letter-writer is a correspondent like any other: each has a biographical note and a list of their own correspondents and letters. Individual MARC records are the simplest way of reflecting this.

In addition, the material in Electronic Enlightenment comes from a wide and growing range of sources, and many letter-writers appear in more than one source edition. Individual MARC records make it possible to see all of a person's correspondence in EE, no matter what the original source.

Who gets a record?

Records are provided for all known individual letter-writers. Anonymous or pseudonymous writers of letters do not have records. No records are provided for the more than 2000 people in Electronic Enlightenment who are only recipients of letters. At this stage we are not providing records for the relatively small number of group letter-writers.

Downloads

We are currently working on a set of updated MARC records and will update this page with instructions on how to obtain them shortly.